"Gay is Unnatural"

Of all the arguments against homosexuality its supposed unnaturality is the most idiotic. Who is to say what is “natural”? If it can be done, it has to be natural. That is the definition of “natural.” Why is it that when homophobes want to put gays down, they call being gay “unnatural,” yet they insist that gays can “change” since being gay is a matter solely of nurture? The only possible answer is that the homophobes excuse their fear by reference to scripture. Nothing's right or wrong but thinking makes it so. God condemns homosexuality in Leviticus but has no problem with Lot impregnating his own daughters after the destruction of the Cities on the Plain.

Being in health care, I get the "It's not natural" argument constantly when it comes to medicines. People want so much not to take pills that lower their blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, etc. "I don't want to have unnatural things in my body". My most effective argument for them is that living past about 40 is not natural, because only in recent history did most people live that long. "natural" means an early death. Driving cars is not natural either, has a high death rate, leads to obesity, heart disease, and psychological disorders. Neither is flying in airplanes. If people want "natural" they can live in the fucking stone age, hunt animals with hand made stone tools, wear animal pelts (or run around naked - is wearing the skin of a dead animal "natural").

On the other hand, same gender sex is common among animals, so is natural. So even if they give in to having an early death, give up central heating and cooling, computers and medications, it's still "natural" for people of the same gender to pair up romantically and/or passionately. If they want to see "natural" they can go to the fucking zoo and visit the monkey exhibit.

"Natural" is meaningless but if people want it they should be willing to live it or be called on their hypocracy.

My most effective argument for them is that living past about 40 is not natural, because only in recent history did most people live that long.

A very good book, which I think every one but particularly health care professionals should read is "why we get sick" an evolutionary approach to disease by Randolph Nesse.

I have a relative who recently got gout, so I explained to him why we get gout, which curiously his doctors hadn't.

There a lot of that, we live in an age were disease is largely regulated ou culture is heavly medicalised, people go see a dr get given a pill and better - that's where the cultural power of palcebos comes from too - but very few people really understand why we get sick (or conversely why we get better) and therein the distinction between natural and unnatural practices and outcomes.

Why would the doctors tell your relative what caused the gout. By doing so, they deprive themselves of a fee when the gout gets them going to see him again for help. Some doctors are also dumb asses -- some of them. I was put into hospital for a bowel disruption, non-specific. An MRI showed I had a variety of ailments, from gall stones to an aortal abdominal hernia. But the imaging also showed a pinched disc. (Actually, a compression fracture.)

Mind you I had told all the doctors who saw me that two weeks earlier I had thrown my back out by trying to lift a 12K window A/C into the window. (OK at 40, stupid at 65.) I had done some research into bowel obstructions and found out that the vagus nerve, if switched off by a pinched disc, will not "tell" a person when to take a shit, or for that matter, help a person shit when they know to go. The reason I had not shat in three weeks (yeah, yuk, yuk: "I told you he's full of shit") was that the vagus nerve was not helping me evacuate -- or even feel the need to. The last time I looked, it takes an exercise of the muscles to crap. I had not crapped because of the compression fracture. It was that simple. Do you think a single one of those doctors had even thought of that. Beware hospitals whose nurses say, "We don't have any Houses around here."